We were all tired. 

My four-year old was exhausted from a day of heavy play at Stinson Beach; my eleven-month old was pooped from missing his morning nap so that a friend could drive both our kids to the beach, and my husband and I were tired because we’d just run the Dipsea Race from Mill Valley to Stinson before playing three hours worth of Frisbee, sand castle building, and chase-the-crawling baby. 

Both kids fell asleep the minute we got in the car to drive home, but I knew that my son needed more than the thirty-five minutes of sleep that the drive afforded.  So I unloaded my husband and daughter at our house and kept driving sleeping Asa round and round the town of Larkspur.

I’d hoped I could pull over into a nice, shady parking spot, leave the car running, and sleep while he snoozed, but the minute we stopped moving, he’d wake up. My butt and quads and hamstring were all tight and achy and I desperately needed to get out of the sitting position, but even more than that, I needed Asa to get more sleep so he could make it through the rest of the day without crumbling.

So on I drove. 

I was too tired to venture north or south; I knew that getting stuck in any kind of traffic would put me over the edge.  Instead, I made myself intimately familiar with the back streets of Larkspur while listening to the Playboy channel on our new satellite radio. 

Who knew there was such a thing as a Playboy channel?  Who knew you could really say cunt, jizz, and tea bagging on the radio?  Who knew I’d be driving my baby son around listening to callers complaining about their erectile dysfunction/ distaste for oral sex/ anxiety about a wife’s gift of a threesome?

I stumbled on the station while exploring the essentially disappointing selection that our newly purchased Sirius Satellite offered.  And you know what?  It beats the monotony of Alice 97.3 or the tired children’s mix of Baby Beluga, Get Your Jammies On, Slippery Fish, that’s for damn sure. 

For a tired mother whose libido could stand a boost, listening to people talk about sex for an hour while cruising the suburbs probably isn’t such a bad thing.  I just need to remember to change the channel before my daughter gets in the car; otherwise I’m going to have a lot of tricky questions to answer.

By Eliza Harding Turner

Labels: Baby Beluga, Dipsea Race, Eliza Harding Turner, erectile dysfunction, Get Your Jammies One, oral sex, Playboy channel, sand castles, Sirius Satellite radio

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For the better part of the last year or two, I have had the incessant and annoying company of a small but loud voice in my head that catalogues every virtuous/maternal/helpful deed I perform throughout the day. 

“Look at me, I’m doing the laundry. Now I’m ordering more diapers and wipes online. Thank God for me. And now I’m remembering everybody’s jackets and hats and snacks as I head out the door, and on my way out I’ll take out the trash and put those letters in the mailbox.  Check, check, check.” 

With each action completed, I itemized all the ways in which my being at home with our children was necessary, beneficial.  How hard I was working!  How much was getting done because of me!  And, yet, no one had ever questioned the importance of my role.  Not one person in my life had so much as commented on the way I have chosen to spend my time: raising our children. 

Was I really feeling so underappreciated that I had to congratulate myself on every single step of my day?   

Sure, every one of us, no matter what our profession, could use a little more recognition, and perhaps mothers more so than others because so much of what we do is invisible, but this harping in my head seemed to involve more than looking for kudos. 

This was my own, internal conversation, with one half of me trying to reassure that other, relentlessly critical half of me, trying to make the point that what I was doing was indeed valid. 

The reassuring voice knows that I like being home with my children and raising them myself.  I waited so long to have them, have worked with so many other people’s children, and now it is finally my turn.  They’re fabulous -- why wouldn’t I choose to be with them? 

But I am not making any money, and I’m not balancing work and child rearing at the moment the way some of my friends are.  So that, in my mind, took me down a few notches.   

Also, there was the fact that I had completely removed all creative and intellectual thought from my life, after it being so much at the core of who I was for the last two decades. 

In the absence of that intellectual and creative richness, my head became an echo chamber, ready to ring with the unhelpful chatter of all the most unreasonable, harsh, critical voices I could muster. 

I hadn’t carved out any time for myself because I didn’t have any reason to justify paying for childcare -- and because being away from my children just for the sake of getting away was ultimately unsatisfying.  The few times I did get a sitter to grant myself some time, the first hour of freedom felt great, but after that, I had to be really caught up in what I was doing to not feel the pull back home.   

Eventually, the internal monologue got so loud and so monopolizing that I realized something had to change.  I took the plunge and squared away babysitting time two mornings a week so that I could write and read and engage that long lost part of my brain. 

That time is something I simultaneously look forward to and dread.  The first morning was hellish, and I made myself cry before the first hour was up.  Everything that I hate about writing -- having this need to write but not knowing what to write, feeling that I have nothing to say that hasn’t already been said before -- all of that came flooding back. 

The difference between trying to write four year ago and trying to write now was that this time I was paying for the privilege of sitting quietly in the library, so it seemed clear that I owed it to myself to try and stick it out and make it work.  The words did eventually come a little easier, and I hesitatingly rediscovered the pleasure of creating on the page.   

As soon as I found that pleasure, that piercing voice that was trumpeting every trivial accomplishment of my day quieted down some. 

It didn’t disappear, but it became manageable. 

The writing is still hard, and I still get those flurries of panic when I want so badly to write yet don’t know what about, but I have a little hope that it will get better. 

It will get worse too, I’m sure of it. 

Perhaps if I can manage enough moments of satisfying writing, that will be enough to get me back into my quiet corner in the library on those precious mornings I have to myself.  I have this other, engaging place that my brain can go now -- at the end of the day, when I’m picking up toys and wiping down counters and cleaning bottles.

I have another place I can go, even if it’s all in my head.  

By Eliza Harding Turner 

Labels: babysitter, childcare, creativity, dirty laundry, Eliza Harding Turner, intellectual, library, raising children, stay-at-home mom, working mom, writing

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Asa is six and a half months old.  A boy in the house, amidst all of Adeline’s girliness.

Such a solid little person, in every sense.  Physically, he is dense.  Fruitcake dense.  Nearly off the charts in the percentiles the pediatricians give you.  If he’s in the 98^th percentile for height and weight, what do the other two percent look like? 

When you pick him up, it’s a commitment.  Not like other kids, who you can carry and continue to buzz around, picking up toys, making lunch.  Holding Asa with one arm is sustainable for only a short period of time before your wrist begins to ache and your shoulder starts slumping forward in a way that can’t be healthy. 

He has this enormous head and cheeks so full that it’s hard to tell what shape his face really is beneath all that flesh.  I think the rule is that if you still have blue eyes by the time you’re twelve months old, they’re here to stay.  I hope Asa’s do, because they’re gorgeous.  They’re a deep blue, and I can’t stop dressing him in blue—navy, turquoise, azure… every shade of blue makes those twinkling eyes of his shine.  His eyes really do twinkle, Santa-style, when he smiles, and man can this kid smile. 

He is my cherub baby, here on earth to snuggle into me, chuckle his deep, earthy laugh, and flirt with the world.  Some babies favor mesmerizing ceiling fans, most are drawn to sparkling lights.  Mine lives for eye contact.  When we’re out and about in the world, he stares at strangers until they finally relent and look at him.  The moment they lock eyes with him, he grins crazily and jerks around in my arms in spasmodic joy.  It’s not so different from holding an excited puppy—a strong one, a lab maybe.  No poodle, this kid. 

So what will all of these qualities add up to in a few years’ time?  A jolly, people-oriented, lady-killing linebacker? 

I’m in no rush to find out—I like him just the way he is right now, though I’ll be grateful when he’s able to put his chubby legs to use and move under his own motor, saving what’s left of his mama’s back.

By Eliza Harding Turner

Labels: 98th percentile, baby, blue-eyes, cute son, Eliza Harding Turner, girliness

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